Built in 1810, burned to the ground in 1873 and completely re-built in 1875, Odessa Opera House is a stunning looking architectural marvel. All the pictures are taken with Nikon D300, Nikkor 18-200 f/3.5-5.6 VR lens
Tuesday night photo safari with Dennis…
All shots Nikon D300 + 17-50mm f/2.8 Tamron.
All pictures taken with D300 and 70-200 f/2.8 VR lens. RAW Converter - Capture NX.
(click on the last image to enlarge)
or how I quadrupled Capture NX speed!
Capture NX is without doubts one of the most efficient RAW converters capable of working Nikon D300 NEF files. While it’s user interface is not as friendly and convenient as some of the competitive products out there offer (Lightroom, Bibble, PhotoShop, etc), it’s still intuitive enough for a newbie as well as any experienced graphics software operator. The fact that Capture NX is the only software on the market capable of processing Nikon’s proprietary data stored in D300’s NEF files (such as Camera Controls, tone curves, etc) was the deal breaker [for me personally] when I was considering which converter to pick.
Unfortunately, one of the major “flaws” of Capture NX is performance. Numerous D300 users reporting almost daily their frustration with Capture NX. Some of them are still hopeing that Nikon will address the issue, while others abandoned using Capture in favor of much faster and more user friendly 3rd party raw converters.
Capture NX is the only raw converter I own and I have always been very happy with the results it produces. However, its speed has always been a big issue for me. Processing hundreds of shots taken at a wedding would normally take several evenings. Most of the time I would find myself sitting and waiting for capture to finish certain operation before I could proceed. Very basic things such as white balance adjustment or USM would be taking unreasonably long time. At the time my computer specs were as follows:
CPU ............... AMD 64 3200+
Memory ............ DDR400 PC3200 - 2Gb (was running at 266Mhz)
Hard dirve ........ 500Gb SATA 3.0Gb/s
FSB clock ......... 266Mhz
OS ................ Windows XP Pro
My capture NX was very slow and I was getting impatient. Before upgrading my system, I timed some of the operations I was performing:
Opening ISO 1250 NEF file: 2mins
(The file itself would open rather quickly, in a matter of 3-5 seconds, however from that point it would take 2mins until the yellow triangle disappeared)
Saving ISO 1250 NEF file: 1min 4secs Saving means I would open the file, quickly crop it and immediately hit save (while yellow triangle was still on)
Low (200) ISO files were a bit faster.
Opening ISO 200 NEF file would take 22 seconds (till the triangle disappears)
Saving ISO 200 NEF file (open/crop/save) would take 17 seconds
While this kind of performance may seem to be okay if you’re processing few files per day, working with hundreds of files after certain events was turning into a huge effort.
MY UPGRADE
While I was observing Capture NX struggling with processing the new D300 NEFs, I noticed that there was not much of hard drive activity going on. I had rather fast 3.0Gb/s SATA drives, so I figured they were not very likely to be the bottle neck. Also, I couldn’t really catch CPU being maxed out either. That lead me to believe that the problem with Capture NX performance was most likely in memory not being able to deliver data to CPU fast enough. Because it data was being brought to CPU in a timely manner, CPU would be busy (sitting close to 100% utilization) until processing was over.
Therefore, I knew I needed to maximize
- Memory performance
- FSB data transfer rate (FSB is responsible for delivering data from memory to CPU)
- And while I was at it, I was going to get a faster CPU as well.
Quad core or Dual Core ?
First question I needed to resolve was - do I go with a quad core or a dual core CPU. I was willing to spend about $300 for a CPU and within this price range I could either get
1) Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Kentsfield 2.4GHz 2 x 4MB L2 Cache LGA 775 Quad-Core Processor (about $260 at the time)
- or -
2) Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 Conroe 3.0GHz 4M shared L2 Cache LGA 775 65W Dual-Core Processor (about $270 at the time)
What helped me decide was this diagram by Tom’s Harware
While slightly slower (frequency wise) quad core Q6600 was overall as fast as the faster (frequency wise) E6850 dual core, the Photoshop TIFF processing benchmark test revealed, that faster clocked dual core was significantly (almost 23%) faster. Since processing graphics files was my primary goal, this helped me decide in favor of the dual core.
This was my choice for CPU:
Which Memory?
I looked at both DDR2 and DDR3 memory offerings. There have multiple “DDR2 vs DDR3 shootout” reports published and one thing I noticed was that while DDR3 operated at slightly faster frequencies, it showed longer recovery latencies, thus delivering speeds either equal to or slightly above DDR2. In addition, DDR3 was almost twice as expensive as DDR2. So I decided to go with fastest DDR2 memory I could afford. My pick was DDR2-800 memory which offered lowest latencies (4-4-4-12). In addition to solid specs, this particular brand is known for being very tolerable for over clocking (should I decide to push my hardware beyond the manufacturer’s intended speeds). Therefore I settled on the following modules ($99 at the time):
Motherboard
Now that I have picked my CPU and memory, I needed a motherboard which could drive both components most efficiently. I also wanted a trusted brand as well as board known for its capabilities for over clocking. Since my CPU FSB frequency was 1333Mhz I needed motherboard which could support that. It would also have to be capable of supporting FSB/Memory ratio to make the best use of my DDR2-800 (which would require 400Mhz clock while FSB clock before North bridge would remain 333Mhz). It would be nice to have eSATA for backups, on-board sound and fanless cooling (since I prefer my system to be quiet). Finally, on the “quiet” note, I wanted BIOS which could drive both my CPU and system fans with quietness “in mind” - I’d like to be able to specify maximum acceptable CPU and system board temperature, and BIOS should be able to keep both fans to the lowest possible RPM needed to provide the desired temperature.
In the end, my choice was the following ASUS motherboard (which fit ALL of my requirements listed above):
Optional components
Finally, I estimated required power supply wattage needed to run my new combo and it came very close to 400Watt. My existing PSU was marked as a 380Watts unit. Knowing that I wanted to buy an extra hard drive in near future, I realized that my existing power supply won’t be able to handle the load. Therefore, I needed a new one. It would have to be at least 500 (preferrably 600) watts unit and it had to be QUIET. Few days of research and I decided to go with SeaSonic S12 650Watt PSU ($140 at the time). Several reviews gave it very high rankings as far as quietness and that’s what mattered to me the most. Note, I could have gone with a cheapest PSU for about $49 if I didn’t care about the noise, but of well…
At the same time, I decided to order an Ultra-quiet CPU fan to replace the included with CPU stock cooler (which is very noisy to my taste). This $67 fan is absolutely silent.
NEW SYSTEM SETUP
Finally, this is what my new system looked like:
1. ASUS P5K LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX Intel Motherboard - $129 at the time
2. G.SKILL 4GB(2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) - $99 at the time
3. Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 Conroe 3.0GHz 4M - $279, but I bought mine on ebay instead for $200
4. SeaSonic S12 Energy Plus SS-650HT ATX12V / EPS12V 650W Power Supply - $139 at the time
5. ZALMAN CNPS 9700 NT 110mm 2 Ball Ultra Quiet CPU Cooler - $67 at the time
Total came close to $700, however upgrading power supply and getting zalman CPU fan was not necessary, hence the entire upgrade could have been closer to $500, or even $400 if I went with slightly cheaper motherboard (there were options around $70) and slightly cheaper memory (around $70 but with 5-5-5-15 latencies). In fact, the overall cost could have easily been kept down to $350 ($200 CPU + $70 mobo + $60 DDR2 CAS5 4Gb RAM).
I picked premium components (and paid extra) because:
1) I wanted quiet system
2) I wanted easily overclock’able system
3) I wanted brand name parts
PERFORMANCE IMPOVEMENT
Capture NX performance improvement exceeded my expectations. I was thinking I would have been happy if I could make Capture NX to work twice faster. What I got instead was - 4 times improvement! Capture NX processing speed quadrupled!
Opening ISO 1250 NEF file:
Old setup: was taking 2 mins
New setup: 30 seconds!
Saving ISO 1250 NEF file:
Old setup: was taking 1min 4 secs
New setup: 12 seconds!
Low (200) ISO files:
Opening ISO 200 NEF file on old setup: would take 22 seconds
New setup: 9 seconds
Saving ISO 200 NEF file on old setup: would take 17 seconds
New setup: 3 seconds!
Now Capture NX runs with a very acceptable speed. No more slow sliders. Sharpening mask (USM) takes about 5 seconds to settle (when using USM, images usually appear slightly oversharpened first, but then later sharpness sort of “settles in”.. or some people confused it with “reversing back”, while in fact, it’s not reversing, it’s just takes time to render it completely… and in the past, it was taking very long time to render the true sharpness, and now takes only 5 secs). Overall, I’m very pleased with Capture NX at this point.
So much anticipated New Year’s party was a blast! Time flew by so fast that I didn’t even get a chance to get drunk! We all gathered at Julia & Eric’s place around 8pm and before I knew, we were counting down the ball drop and toasting to the happy new year :-)
This was my first more/less serious test drive of the newly acquired Nikon D300. All shots made with Nikon D300, SB-800 flash, 18-200mm VR lens, Manual exposure mode, ISO 640, f/4-4.5, 1/40″. Enjoy the New Years Party pictures here. Happy New Year!!
It’s been almost a month since my new D300 has arrived. I’ve already registered 3000 shutter releases and still trying to wrap my mind around everything that this camera has to offer. It’s simply a stunning machine.
First couple of days I was comparing it to my D70, shotting both cameras side by side under various lighting conditions. I quite quickly realized that D300 is a LOT more capable camera than D70. Some of the things that immediately made me realize I can never go back to D70 were:
1) D300’s AF system - Continuous mode with focus release priority and 21 area dynamic focusing performed flawlessly during my half hour tests at go-karts racing track
2) D300’s matrix metering - produced images with spot on exposure. I no longer had to “tone curve” my pictures the way I did with D70 (no more “underexposure”). D300’s matrix metering pushes histogram very tightly to the right, producing excellent results.
3) D300’s LCD - incredibly clear, sharp and simply outstanding screen - I no longer need to download images to my laptop to evaluate their quality, it can finally be done on camera’s LCD!
4) High ISO performance - ISO 800 images look VERY clean! I’ve been very concerned if I had to shoot D70 at ISO 640 or above - the noise was becoming a factor. I’ve shot D300 at ISO 800 and noise was not an issue whatsoever! I’m yet to test it at 1000 and 1250, but even having useable ISO 800 means a lot to me!
5) AF finetuning, AE finetuning, RAW+Fine JPEG option, scrolling though images in playback mode while zoomed in, continuous shooting with SB-800 flash, 5-6 fps high speed shutter, etc,etc,etc
This camera REALLY deserves the “Best DSLR of the Year” award, and now I’m proud to own one! Stay tuned for more posting, image samples and thoughts.
When I first decided to upgrade to D300, I was pretty sure that I was going to keep my D70, primarily because I didn’t believe a used D70 was worth anything. To my surprise, after a little bit of digging on ebay, I realized I could recover almost $400 for it, considering that mine came with a lot of extras (two 1 gig CF cards, nikon remote, extra manual, extra LCD covers, extra battery, etc).
It was sad to see it go… I had it since the early 2005 - it was my first DSLR, and I learned so much about photography with this awesome camera… It traveled around the world with me, there isn’t a function on this camera I haven’t used… it has seen it all. But since I’ve got my new D300, D70 found itself just resting on my desk, collecting dust. I figured, since I can’t get anymore mileage from it, someone else might. That, and only that helped me to say good bye to this amazing piece of Nikon equipment… Good bye D70!
For those of you who don’t know.. not so long ago I signed up to be a photographer assistant at a local photo studio - Tampa Photo. No no, I did not quit my primary job.. Still, my main duties are - automation, perl scripting, performance monitoring and such :) However, I decided to take my hobby (photography) to the next level - learn commercial aspect of it, while improving my skills by working with real pros. And the extra $$ I earn doing it will certainly help in acquiring new photo gear :)
It’s a very exciting engagement for me. I’ve already went out on a couple of assignments with Kevin and Eric, and hopefully next week I will get to work with MJ. They’ve already given me tons of pointers and few priceless advices. I feel already that my shooting skills jumped up by two levels. I’m finally not afraid of using speedlight anymore (before, I only believed in “Natural lighting” and couldn’t stand flash, b-cs as I thought it was “messing up” real colors :-), and now I’m learning not to trust my camera in making exposure decisions and taking responsibility for those myself. It’s hard… it feels like I have to re-learn how to play tennis from scratch… after playing for 7 years! But I’m slowly piecing it together, little by little…
This picture was taken with Nikon D70 and Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 VR lens
Wow, it’s been a while since I blogged. I’m going to try to catch up in this post, going from the most recent events back to where I left off.
From the most recent
Last Sunday my friend Randy and his brother Steve took me to the Buccaneers vs Cardinals football game. They had an extra ticket and they generously offered me to go for free :) I took the opportunity to work on my new shooting technique (which is shooting in Manual exposure mode, which I will comment on a little later). I grabbed my Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 VR lens and headed to the Raymond James stadium. It never crossed my mind that I may have trouble getting this lens past the security checkpoint. The guy who was checking the bags by the stadium entrance pulled me over and said “This thing is too big, I don’t know if I can let you in with it…Let me check with my supervisor” So he called another guy who then called another guy who then asked me “Does this thing extend any further?” And I must say, with the hood on, the 70-200VR looks quite long :) I said “No sir, this is as far as it goes” :) after which he waved me in.
Even though our seats were quite close to the field (row H, which is like… 8th row from the field), because we were sitting by the end zone, I realized that 200mm wasn’t offering me enough reach to shoot midfield and you can absolutely forget about it if the action was on the opposite end. But I managed to snap few interesting shots anyways. Here is one of my favorites:
The entire gallery of that game can be viewed here: Buccaneers vs Cardinals
Unfortunately, most of the action took place on the other side of the field, and not being so much into the game I was “stuck” with… taking pictures of Tampa Bay Buccaneers Cheerleaders :) It actually happened to be a challenging task I must say. In some cases the girls would either have some dudes on the background (photographers, security staff, etc) while in others I wouldn’t be able to compose a good shot b-cs some fan’s heads would get in a way. Finally, nailing down exposure turned out to be a bit tricky too - because the light was very harsh (early afternoon sun) it was resulting in strong highlights on girls faces. Bright white stripes painted on the grass were not helping either - they were creating quite distracting background which confused the heck out of my D70’s matrix metering. Eventually, I decided to spot meter off of girls faces and ran with that (which turned out to be a winning strategy). I locked my aperture on f/4 (to be on the safe side, making sure I was getting more than just their eyes and noses in focus ;-) and shutter speed was usually floating around 1/2500 (plus/minus third of a stop)
I must say, I was really “sweating” the shooting conditions… Constant doubts were attacking me - am I being too agressive with the highlights, should I back out exposure a lil bit, may be go by the matrix metering and preserve as much highlights as I can? But that will result in heavy postprocessing with a lot of curving later on… so, I was literally “sweating” it :) By the very end, I got a bit frustrated, I thought nothing was going to come out of my “Manual” approach. So when the game was over, I came closer to the field, and just in case my “fooling around on M” was not going to deliver any decent results, I flipped into Aperture Priority and snapped few pics of every girl.. just in case…
When I got home and sorted thru the material I was stunned. All my work in “Manual” resulted in perfect exposure! I simply nailed it. No postprocessing was needed. And the only pictures that didn’t make the cut were… the ones I took in the end, using Aperture Priority - they were a bit too dark and required “curving”…
Anyways, here is the Tampa Bay Buccaneers Cheerleaders pictures gallery
One week ago
We attended Guavaween celebration down in Ybor City. To our surprise, it went pretty well. We got there about 20 mins before the night parade began. Parking wasn’t a problem at all (although did cost $20), getting inside was another $15/person but everything was quite well organized. Police was everywhere, we haven’t seen any “misbehaving” drunks and overall, had a lot of fun!
The entire gallery can be view here: Ybor City Guavaween Pictures
Two weeks ago
Attended AirFest in St. Petersburg. My friend Dennis told me about this event, but because their web site looked kinda boring I decided I wasn’t going to go. But then later on, as Nadia and I were sitting at Panera bread on Saturday afternoon and trying to come up with what we were going to do for the rest of the day, I decided to give it a shot. And so we rushed down to St. Pete, and were quite surprised with how many various activities were going on there besides the airshow itself…
The entire picture gallery can be viewed here: St. Petersburg AirFest Pictures
Three weeks ago
Denis and I went on a photo safari to Ybor city and Tampa downtown. To our surprise it went quite well, we’ve come out with few decent shots, but my favorite still was this one, when we fooled around in the end with a cigar we picked up at Ybor for exactly this purpose :)
The Ybor City/Tampa picture gallery is here
Four weeks ago
Trip to new York.. boy, there is no way I can even begin to describe it :) I’ll just say that the pictures are here and that will have to do it :)
New York City Pictures gallery
Finally
And finally, my DELL Vostro 1400 has been working flawlessly ever since I got it. I’m very happy with my purchase, it’s a relatively light, very mobile laptop with extremely bright LCD screen and long battery life (I consistently get 6 hours on this 9-cell battery).
Last Saturday I had the privilege of assisting Kevin (of Tampa Photo Weddings) in shooting an event their studio was hired for. Among other things I’ve learned that night, Kevin convinced me to start shooting RAW.
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So, as I’m learning my ways around Nikon Capture NX and Adobe Photoshop CS2’s RAW capabilities, I’m kind of beginning to like the idea.
First thing that jumped out was the fact that Nikon Capture NX handles it’s native RAW files (NEFs, to be precise) a lot better than Photoshop. This, of course, could easily be due to my lack of experience with either product. Nevertheless, I feel that after few days of messing with them I’m beginning to iron out my first workflow of the RAW postprocessing. So far these are the steps I noticed myself repeating more or less consitently: 1) Loading RAW (NEF) files into Nikon Capture NX |
All of the steps above are basically un-doing some of the in-camera setting I had that night. And the fact that up to this point I’m still operating withing the native settings of a RAW file means that the image has suffered no degradation in quality thus far.
5) Export resulted file into Photoshop (File->Open With… in Capture NX - don’t even have to save an intermediate file, straight port from Capture to PS - very nice)
6) Photoshop gets the imported image in TIFF format, which is really good, with TIFF being 16 bit data source as opposed to 8-bit JPEG
7) Cropping as needed
8) At this point, I only tweaked the firework shots a bit more - I curved them really hard (brightening up the highlights and darkening the rest) and sharpened them (using unsharpen mask) also quite heavy - up to 5px radius.
9) Switch image mode from 16 bit to 8 - getting ready to save a JPEG
10) Save the final JPEG, ready to upload online.
It’s actually not that bad… I’m sure in the future, as I get more comfortable with the Capture NX I will be doing the rest of the steps in there, but as of now I have a lot more experience in Photoshop, so it actually works out better for me using it for anything that has to do with “cooked” (non-RAW) files.
Oh, yeah, the 4th of July gallery is here. Enjoy!